Matthew Little
Matthew Little (born July 23, 1991) is an American poet and fiction writer. He is also an outsider musician who releases under the name Ann Xiety, and he is one-half of the experimental hip hop duo Plot Holes along side his friend Eli Burkley. Life Youth Little was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, to parents Lynda Little and Kenneth Rapoza. He is of Portuguese and Italian decent. They split while he was in elementary school in 1999. As a child, Little never really cared for reading or writing but did show signs of creativity. He recalled in elementary school he wrote a "children's book" about a painter cat, and even drew the pictures that went along with it. Actual writing didn't come until later; it wouldn't be until middle school where he discovered lyric writing. Also while in middle school he found joy in drawing crude comics after reading "Johnny The Homicidal Manic", a comic series by Jhonen Vasquez, the creator of the Nickelodeon show "Invader Zim". From there it developed, and one of his pursuits in life became to be a published author. After many unsuccessful tries in writing a novel, he discovered poetry after meeting his ex-boyfriend in 2012, who wrote poems of his own. At the time, Little had almost no experience in reading or writing poetry until he was shown the works of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. He never had any proper training in the medium, and claims he taught himself how to write. He has said that early in his career he thought to take writing courses to help him improve his structuring and wording, but decided against it as he believes writing is a skill that can be taught if the person has it in them to push through the medium, and also he didn't want anyone clouding his judgement on how someone should write. Writing career Little, as of February 2018, has authored three short collections of poetry. He wrote Hell in a Basket: A small collection of personal poems, a ''chapbook which was published on August 24, 2013, independently through CreateSpace, an Amazon.com based self-publishing platform.Hell in a Baskett: A small collection of personal poems, Amazon.com. Web, Aug. 28, 2013. Written between the months of January and July 2013, Little wrote extensively about the home-life he was living, which included his daily struggle dealing with an alcoholic mother and the subsequent depression and anxiety that came along with it. As his first piece published, Little originally feared readers would find it "mediocre", as he admitted to rushing writing most of the collection, but since its publication ''Hell in a Basket received acclaim from readers who either have identified with his words or appreciate the style which it was written. However, in mid-2019 Little decided to pull the plug on Basket's publication, citing the reason being that he considers the work too juvenile to be taken seriously. He also published Ribbons ''in October 2014 which, like ''Hell in a Basket, is a small collection of confessional poetry. Unlike his first publication, Ribbons was published online for free after what Little says "a year sitting" and accumulating poems. He wrote that he couldn't imagine coming up with other poems for the collection, and decided to release it as a way of closure, to close a chapter of his life of writing poems about his stress, anxieties, heartbreak, etc. Since being published on Wattpad, Ribbons has been viewed over 300 times and "liked" 17 times. In 2014 Little completed his first ever short story, Breaking Water which was published on Wattpad. The gruesome story details a group of sadistic men a part of a crime syndicate who kidnap pregnant women so they can steal their babies and sell them for profit, and the story centers around Lisa, one of their captures who tries to escape their clutches. The story is based on an idea he thought up while in middle school. It was published October 23, 2014 after being written in only just five days. Little has since began to extend the story into a full novel. In 2016, Little released a small chapbook of poetry titled At The Table With Your Mother during a cool-down period between his novel projects. The book is seven poems long, and were all written spontaneously during a brief burst of creativity. Little has also written several other loose poems that he doesn't plan to include in any collection, and has on and off worked on a new collection titled Unbalance, formerly called Breaking Through. Little published a short story he had wrote during the summer of 2013 titled The Last Web Chat in February 2017. He released it through Wattpad entirely for free. The story concerns a teen named Michael and his brief relationship with a broken-down girl he meets online named Jessica. The story wasn't finished as Little couldn't complete it due to his Microsoft Word failing to work; he decided to release it exactly as he had written it, mistakes and all, because to him the story ended at a point that made it raw in itself. His third collection was to be titled Breaking Through, and he planned on it being published physically. After writing a number of poems between 2015 and 2017, Little decided instead to release what he had online as his last free publication, and retitled it Unbalance. It was published as a picture post on Facebook. In 2019, Little published his first poem in an online literary magazine, Anti-Heroin Chic. The poem, "I Carved Your Name In My Heart", appeared in the magazine's farewell issue in May.http://heroinchic.weebly.com/blog/i-carved-your-name-in-my-heart-by-matthew-little Private life Little is openly gay. He came out to most of his family and friends in high school, and then in May 2014 told his father. In a Facebook post he described coming out to him as a major turning point in his life, ending the post with the line "I'm free."https://www.facebook.com/skittlehappy/posts/4098597960370?pnref=story Little believes most of his anxiety issues came from having to hide his true identity from his father. In the poem "About Being Out" (originally titled "Two of Me"), he describes that he had nothing to fear, writing about his parents, "They know the time, they hug me anyway."http://skittle-happy-matt.tumblr.com/post/85623782872/two-of-me Mental health Little has been very outspoken about having Generalized Anxiety Disorder as well as depression. He discussed it at length in a YouTube video called "About my anxiety" http://youtu.be/LSeoNOfkw8s?t=14s, where he says he was diagnosed with it in his senior year of high school in 2010, and that he "suffers" from it on "a molecular scale". It has served as inspiration for his poetry; Hell in a Basket alone has a whole chunk of poems about it and even on the back cover he wrote that the book is dedicated to his anxiety. He has since, however, been improving his life living with the disorder. Ann Xiety and Plot Holes Besides writing, Little has taken an interest in creating music. Much before he began to write he had hoped to start a band and play psychedelic music akin to Pink Floyd, The Doors, and Jefferson Airplane. However, it never happened. In 2012, while at his ex's home, Little began to listen to different music, taking a liking to artists such as Lana Del Rey, Sonic Youth, Daniel Johnston and more, really enjoying the energy that came from lo-fi and underground music. When he was alone, he would pick up his ex's guitar and strum it, recording some of the sounds he made. In 2015, Little had decided to take what he recorded years prior and sing over the instrumentals and then further edit the tracks on his laptop. With confidence given from his cousin Eric, who himself is a musician that plays for the Virginia indie band Ella Vader, Little shaped what he had and released a free album online in November 2016 titled ''Death and Doubt'''' as Ann Xiety. A few months later in April, Little released a 2nd album titled ''Dry Hit. Not long after that he released an EP of cover songs, and at the beginning of 2018 released a 3rd album, Cult Music. Little's original project name was Matty, but ultimately changed it to Ann Xiety, his proposed drag name had he ever done drag. In December 2016, Little and his good friend Eli Burkley started an experimental hip hop together called Plot Holes. There music has been described as "lofi", and "surreal", which borders on the other pieces of music Little has released. Together they've so far released two mixtapes, Basement Fire ''and Smoking wit Sylvia Plath, and are in the process of recording an album titled ''Foodstamps. '' '' Future works Little has mentioned throughout his social media outlets that he is working on his novel writing. He is currently at work writing a novel called ''Teddy Bears''https://www.facebook.com/matthew.little.writer/posts/343460875835018 https://www.facebook.com/matthew.little.writer/posts/317490408432065 https://www.facebook.com/matthew.little.writer/posts/255217921325981, which deals with LGBT-themes and, as he claims, is somewhat a different take on the LGBT genre. He is also working on another novel, Florida, about a pregnant woman and her friends who are terrorized by a madman while they're having a enjoyable day by a lake. He also wrote in his release posts for Ribbons that he plans on writing more poetry for the future. Writing Influences Little has said the poetry of Sylvia Plath inspired him to write poetry seriously, as her poetry was the first of any major poet he ever read. He also cites Anne Sexton as an influence. As for his aspiring novel-writing, Little has never mentioned anyone as an influence when it comes to the medium, but has said he enjoyed the writing styles of Truman Capote, Dave Cullen, J.K. Rowling, Alex Sanchez, Shirley Jackson, and Beatrice Sparks (whom was claimed to be the anonymous diarist of the novel Go Ask Alice). Subject matter A good majority of Little's writings, especially in his poetry, deals with themes of fear and anxiety. As a suffer of anxiety and paranoia, Little has said in private that he hopes his poetry will be for people with anxiety what the poetry of Sylvia Plath's is to sufferers of depression. Candidly, Little has written about how he fears the little things of everyday life, such as hearing bangs, being around other people, and he has conveyed images of anxiety by showing his fears about who he is as a person. Little also dives into his own bouts of depression, mostly stemming from relationships or personal inward troubles. The way in which he writes was taught by how he read and view older poetry; he considers himself a traditionalist when it comes to his lines and delivery, but he keeps his subjects and how he writes about them very modern. One reviewer of Hell in a Basket noted that Little "writes with an old soul". "Little ties these bits of grey matter together with the finesse of an accomplished poet beyond his years." - A reviewer on Amazon Little has also dived into the subject of living and dealing with an alcoholic parent. He has used his poetry to explicitly give readers insight to the trauma he has faced in the face of others close to him suffering from addiction. This subject has also crossed over into his prose; in his unfinished novel Teddy Bears, Little has Mark, the main character, live with a non-functioning alcoholic father, basing some of the things Mark explains to the reader on real scenes he had seen in real life. The prose Little has published online has also given examples of how Little tends to focus on the dark side of his subjects. While Teddy Bears is, in a sense, a gay love story, it's twist is that the two lovers are on the road evading arrest after going on a robbing spree; there are also scenes and mentions of hard drug use, going into the underbelly of the lower class of the 21st century. Little's favorite tool when writing is realism, displaying things as they really are. The main character's boyfriend, Gerry, is shown to live in a small "shack" with his sister and her drug addict fiance. These images are shown partially because Little experienced living conditions such as this, and knows that he can accurately and believably convey it, and also shows it because it's a side not seen when it comes to novels dealing with the LGBT. He has also shown a likeness to the horror genre. Little's short story Breaking Water has a very ominous grimness to it, as well as a bleak, depressing depiction of agony as it deals with the mindset of kidnapped people trying to survive even though they know they're going to die. It's appalling amount of nudity and scenes of heavy violence give it a transgressiveness; the type of horror Little enjoys is "chaotic" meaning he likes to have many loud scenes of drama followed by equally hectic amounts of terror. Publications 'Poetry' * Hell in a Basket: A small collection of personal poems.'' CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013.' * ''[[Ribbons (poetry collection)|'Ribbons''']], Wattpad, 2014''' * Unbalance, 2017' Novels: * ''Florida, ''TBA * [[Teddy Bears (novel)|'Teddy Bears']]',' TBA' * Breaking Water'', TBA''' * [[Boss (novel)|'Boss''']], TBA''' Short stories: *''[[Breaking Water (short story)|'Breaking Water']], Wattpad, 2014''' *''[[The Last Web Chat (short story)|'The Last Web Chat']], Wattpad, 2017''' Chapbooks *''[[At The Table With Your Mother (chapbook)|'At The Table With Your Mother']], ''Tumblr, 2016 Audio / video 'Discography' ;(as Ann Xiety) ;Albums ;* [[Death and Doubt (Ann Xiety album)|''Death and Doubt]], album, ''YouTube, 2016 ;*''[[Dry Hit (Ann Xiety album)|'Dry Hit']], album, YouTube, 2017''' ;*''Cult Music, album, YouTube, 2018 ;*The Essentials (the v best of), YouTube, compilation album, 2018 '''EPs' *''Ann Xiety'', EP, 2016 *[[Sitting in Someone Else's Chair (Ann Xiety EP)|'''''Sitting in Someone Else's Chair]], EP, 2017 (as Plot Holes) Mixtapes * [[Basement Fire (mixtape)|'Basement Fire']]', mixtape, 2017 * [[Smoking wit Sylvia Plath (mixtape)|'Smoking wit Sylvia Plath']]', 'mixtape, 2017' See also *LGBT poets *List of U.S. poets *A Father to my Mother (poem) *Home (poem) *Anti Anxiety Medication Thoughts (poem) References External links ;Poems *"A Writer's Words" ;About *"[http://skittle-happy-matt.tumblr.com/ Matt's personal Tumblr] * Hell in a Basket at Amazon. * Matthew Little on Goodreads * Matthew on Facebook Category:21st-century poets Category:American poets Category:English-language poets Category:Poets Category:Gay writers Category:LGBT writers from the United States Category:Writers from Massachusetts Category:1991 births Category:Living people Category:Confessional poets Category:LGBT poets